Hempfield Area School District’s high school renovation project may yet take a step forward this summer with replacement of the auditorium roof.
The roof over the seating area and stage is in poor condition, according to high school principal David Palmer.
“Honestly, we cannot continue with the roof the way it is. We won’t make it through the year,” he said.
At a buildings and grounds meeting on Tuesday, representatives from the district’s construction team—construction manager SitelogIQ, architect Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, and owner’s rep McKinley Architecture and Engineering—gave their recommendations for a replacement plan for the roof, which could start and finish by the end of summer.
In a presentation, the team described the existing auditorium roof as beyond its useful life with leaks.
The team presented the committee with three options to replace the roof and recommended the option to use a Carlisle PVC rubber roof. The roof would have a 30-year warranty and heat-welding at the seams and could be coated to prolong its usable period near the end of its warranty.
A Carlisle PVC roof over both the auditorium and the stage would cost the district $505,816, and $387,926 if the district only replaced the portion over the auditorium, the team estimated. The money would come from the same bond funding set aside for the high school renovation project.
Interim superintendent Kimberlie Rieffannacht said that issues with the roof caused concern when the high school was putting on its musical performances.
“We don’t want to make it any worse,” she said. “We need to fix the issue at hand.”
Damion Spahr, project executive with SitelogIQ, said the roof work was selected because it will not have to be redone when the high school revitalization construction begins in earnest.
“The point is, fix things that don’t require a cost later,” he said. The auditorium roof covers about one twentieth of the roof square footage of the high school as a whole, he added.
If approved, the project will likely start after July 4, and finish before students return.
At the buildings and grounds meeting, board members seemed generally in support of the project.
“It makes sense to me, the logic behind it makes sense,” said board member Paul Ward. “To me, it’s very good that we’re able to move quickly, that’s a benefit, but it sounds like we’re doing the right thing, and we’re able to move quickly. So that’s the most important thing for me. I see no reason why we wouldn’t do this.”
“I think moving forward with this is the right thing,” said board president Jerry Radebaugh, noting that his questions about whether the roof would need to be altered during later construction had been answered.
Incoming school Superintendent Mark Holtzman, who begins his contract on July 1, emphasized the need to address issues like this at the high school quickly and efficiently.
“To have a facility that’s gotten to this point, it’s been bad for a long time. How much longer are you willing to kick the can?” he said. “We can’t continue to put Band-Aids on things and not repair things because we’re waiting for construction. Construction is going to take a while for us to get shovels in the ground, and there’s still children and staff coming.”
Next steps on high school project
The high school renovation project has been on hold since August, when bids for some of the work revealed the project’s cost had ballooned to almost $150 million, nearly $20 million more than expected. The interior of the high school was proposed to be gutted and renovated over the course of the next three years, leaving most of the exterior intact with some additions.
New architect Crabtree joined the school’s team in April, replacing Core Architects, which resigned in February.
According to Rieffannacht, Crabtree has begun meeting with high school administrators and department chairs to discuss guiding principles, priorities and what the school wants to get out of the renovation.
“We’re getting prepared to go into the design process by talking about how we educate students here in Hempfield Area, and how we’d like to educate them in the future, so that our construction project will reflect those desires of the district,” Rieffannacht said.
Julia Maruca is a TribLive reporter covering health and the Greensburg and Hempfield areas. She joined the Trib in 2022 after working at the Butler Eagle covering southwestern Butler County. She can be reached at jmaruca@triblive.com.
